Huelskamp: McConnell Used 2013 Shutdown For ‘Kentucky Kickback,’ But Won’t Stand Up To Defund Planned Parenthood

In a tweet, Rep. Tim Huelskamp is calling out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for his statement that his first priority when he returns to Washington will be to fund the government. McConnell said this Congress will not defund Planned Parenthood at the expense of ensuring the government remains funded and open.

As Huelskamp observes in his tweet, in October of 2013, Yahoo News reported that then-Minority Leader McConnell secured nearly $3 billion for a dam project in his home state of Kentucky in the government funding bill deal that was passed after a shutdown debate over funding Obamacare and raising the debt limit.

Reports at the time indicated that a provision in the funding bill included $2.918 billion in funding to the Army Corps of Engineers to install locks for the Olmsted Dam and Lock Authority Project on the Ohio River in Kentucky.

Americans are familiar with the ‘Cornhusker Kickback’ that Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson was given in exchange for his vote on Obamacare. Well now Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell has an Obamacare earmark of his own.

The McConnell-Reid deal not only funds Obamacare and suspends the debt limit, it also includes a provision in Section 123 that increases funding for the Olmsted Locks and Dam in Kentucky from $775 million to $2.9 billion.

This is an insult to Kentucky families who don’t want to pay for Obamacare and who don’t want to shoulder any more debt.

Mitch McConnell is trying to blame others for this abuse, but everyone knows he negotiated this deal and everyone knows he wrote the bill. If he didn’t want the earmark included, he could have kept it out.

Also, this isn’t the first time he has supported funds for this project. He also requested $100 million for it in 2010.

This is what’s wrong with Washington and it’s what’s wrong with Mitch McConnell.

On Monday McConnell once again begged off any confrontation regarding shutting down the government over defunding Planned Parenthood, claiming a new president would be needed to do that job.

National pro-life groups and the conservative base of the Republican Party are calling for Planned Parenthood to be defunded following the release of investigative videos exposing top officials from the abortion giant and its partners discussing the practice of harvesting body parts of aborted babies for sale on the open market.

“The Senate Democrats have a big enough number to prevent us from doing things,” McConnell said. “They prevented us from doing any of the bills that appropriate money for the government, thereby forcing a negotiation when we go back in after Labor Day, which I’ll be engaged in with the administration and others to try to sort out how much we’re going to spend and where we’re going to spend it.”

In an interview with Breitbart News last week, ForAmerica president David Bozell said, “These folks are caught on video tape eight times now, embarking on a criminal enterprise that involves cutting off the heads of children and cutting their faces off to get to their brains to sell them for money.”

“If the Republican Party can’t stand up against that, can’t protect the American taxpayer against funding that, they are of no use to us,” he added.